With this year's annual concert event taking place, for the first time, on Arsenal Island, fans of rock, pop, and classical musicians are in for a royally good time when the Quad City Symphony Orchestra performs its annual Quad City Bank & Trust Riverfront Pops concert on August 17, this year's outdoor celebration paying tribute to the legacy of Freddie Mercury and his chart-topping band in “The Music of Queen.”

Winner of five Tony Awards and one of the most memorable, iconic, and popular musicals of the last several decades, legendary composer Stephen Sondheim's Assassins hits the stage at Moline's Black Box Theatre August 8 through 18, its twisty, tuneful tale of famed and obscure killers (and would-be killers) lauded by the New York Times for its “astonishing score” in which “sly distortions of familiar musical tropes approximate the skewed ways in which these characters hear everyday melodies.”

Nominated for five 2011 Tony Awards including Best Musical, and based on the beloved film comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg, the tuneful and riotous Sister Act wraps up Quad City Music Guild's 2019 summer season, the show's August 9 through 18 run demonstrating why the Associated Press deemed it “frothy, giggly, and yet often poignant,” as well as “a musical that hits all the right spots, achieving something close to Broadway grace.”

"She Kills Monsters" at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre -- August 9 through 11.

Described by the Chicago Tribune as “clever, funny, moving, lively, and geeky,” and filled with what Time Out Chicago called “deliciously dorky references to the early days of the Internet,” the Dungeons & Dragons-fueled comedy-drama She Kills Monsters serves as the latest production in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Barn Owl Series, its August 9 through 11 run guaranteed, according to the New York Times, to “slash and shapeshift its way into your heart.”

Praised by the Los Angeles Times for its “hip, snappy dialogue and contemporary sensibilities,” as well as being an “engaging play [that] explores the reality checks that force lovers to look past their romantic illusions,” Micah Schraft's A Dog's House enjoys a New Ground Theatre staging August 9 through 18, with Broadway World lauding the author's “witty, intelligent, entertainingly thought-provoking script.”

A star of film and television whose DVD for his 2006 Comedy Central special became the first to achieve platinum-sales status, comedian/writer/actor Carlos Mencia takes the stage at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on August 11, the latest stop on a busy fall tour that will take the comic from Iowa to California to New York to Florida.

With the New York Music Daily lauding their “darkly inventive Americana” and The Sound praising their “infectious, foot-stomping Americana tunes,” the touring musicians of Muddy Ruckus – guitarist and Quad Cities native Ryan Flaherty and “suitcase drummer” Erika Stahl – perform as Moeller Nights headliners on August 9, the duo's 2018 album Bellows to Mend described by EvolvementRadio.com as “hands down their best work so far.”

In 1992, the District of Rock Island hosted its very first outdoor festival with the debut of its Caribbean-themed celebration Ya Maka My Weekend. Twenty-seven years later, the District's longest-running annual tradition will continue with 2019's Daiquiri Factory-sponsored Ya Maka My Weekend on August 10, an event boasting a marketplace, arts and crafts vendors, ethnic food of all flavors, and concert sets by six sizzling musical acts.

Having charted 67 tunes – six of them number-one hits – on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart between 1985 and 2017, legendary country-pop artist Vince Gill makes his long-awaited appearance at Davenport's Adler Theatre on August 14, performing from a solo repertoire that dates from 1985's The Things That Matter to his new Okie, the latter scheduled for release on August 23.

An iconic rocker with significant credits as a singer/songwriter, producer, guitarist, photographer, philanthropist, and activist, Grammy Award winner Bryan Adams brings his “Shine a Light” world tour to Moline's TaxSlayer Center on August 15, performing from a massive repertoire boasts 14 studio albums, six compilation albums, four live albums, two soundtracks, and an incredible 69 singles.

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